


Protector

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief, M/M, Mentions of torture and canon character deaths, Steve Feels, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 22:17:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2167188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve can't stop thinking about all the people he couldn't save.</p><p>For this prompt at comment-fic on lj: <i>I'm the best at what I do and what I do is think about my mistakes.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Protector

Nobody thought Steve would make it past 12 years old, but Steve's mother kept him alive with her determination alone. She nursed him when he was sick, did who-knows-what to get the medicines, worked round the clock to keep the apartment heated. The survival of his body was a miracle that she slaved for every day of her life.

She died of pneumonia, and Steve wasn't able to do anything for her. He bought medicine, brought a doctor, fed her soup and tea, but in the end, what she did for him a thousand times, bringing him back to the land of the living by dint of pure force and stubbornness, he couldn't even do for her once.

He used to tell Peggy that she had a piece of his heart. He wouldn't have been chosen for the serum without her approval, and he wouldn't have ever fought a battle if she hadn't backed him when no one else would. In the end, he couldn't even give her one damn dance.

He lets Loki be taken prisoner on the helicarrier. He gets distracted by nonsense, and a few minutes later, just a few hundred feet away, Coulson is stabbed through the heart. And Clint Barton, a good soldier, has his mind stolen, violated; Steve is friends with him now, and he can tell that Clint still has nightmares about it, still winces at a light shading into blue, but Clint never admits it and Steve can't do anything to help anyway.

And then he joins SHIELD, vows to help make the world safer, but he's stupid, he doesn't see that Brock and Pierce and half of SHIELD is his enemy -- the only enemy he has really and truly wanted to wipe off this earth, and he sat with them, ate with them, tried to be _one_ of them.

And then he realizes that he never saved Bucky.

Bucky saved his ass every single day since they were kids. And Steve only saved him once, took him from HYDRA, from those torturing bastards.

And then he dragged Bucky back into battle, where Bucky saved him some more -- with his rifle, with his tactics, with his advice. With a calming hand on Steve's chest, reminding him that the world wasn't all on his shoulders, that someday there would be something other than blood.

And then Bucky fell. Because he had Steve's back.

And when HYDRA comes out to play again, Steve realizes that he never saved Bucky from HYDRA, from torture, from anything else. Not even that once. He just gave him a little bullet-filled break and then handed Bucky over to be tortured for 70 years, to have his mind destroyed, to be turned into something that Bucky would been disgusted with, something that Bucky would have shot down.

Sometimes, Steve goes to the Smithsonian and watches those old cartoons. A character always yells, "Save me, Captain America!"

Steve always thinks, "Buddy, you're better off on your own."


End file.
